The new AltaVista look

(November 9, update November 10 2002) AltaVista has launched its new site, presenting a simpler look.

The search form has been moved to the very top of the page. It is broad and gives room for long queries. If you enter the site from a non-American country, AltaVista will add a link to the relevant local version of the site.

AltaVista is definitely trying to copy the success of Google, presenting a much cleaner and search-oriented interface. There are now no banner ads at all on the front page. However, unlike Google, AltaVista continues to list directory-like categories on the home page.

These are not traditional search directory categories, however. They are all related to shopping in one way or the other. There is, as far we can see, no regular directory structure available anywhere on the site.

The new color scheme is classy and pure, and we like it. Still, by changing the logo as well as the color scheme they may weaken their brand.

There is more to look for:

• New navigation tools
• More Acrobat PDF files in the database
• More frequent updates of search results
• A new news search feature that lets searchers sort news items according to topics, regions, or date and time
• AltaVista Shortcuts and AltaVista Shortcut Answers find results on Web pages that are usually invisible to search engines. (on the U.S. Site, English and Spanish only)
• AltaVista News 2.0 includes links to over four million news articles in English and German
• AltaVista Prisma (AV's search query refinement tool) is now available in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian.

According to CNET news AltaVista will update its list of the most popular search queries every day and use this information in order to decide which sites to respider more frequently. Out of some 1 billion database entries, some 20 million will be indexed more regularly.

However, on the AltaVista site AV claims that 50 percent of the results are refreshed daily. That seems to good to be true! As Gary Price has noted, this probably means 50 percent of "the most popular pages".

AltaVista has been known for its strong support for advanced searching. Non-professional searchers will enjoy the "More Precision" link, which brings up a more detailed search form, including alternatives for search for "all these words" (Boolean AND), "this exact phrase" etc.

The "Advanced search" page will in addition give you a form for true Boolean expressions, date filtering and more, just the way it has always done.

The official launch of the new site is on Tuesday November 12.

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